Since I’ve been out of the country all week, I will condense days #13-#19 into one entry.
Monday morning, I hydrated up, took some painkillers, boarded a plane for Nicaragua, and was on my way to join the Georgia Tech group on a mission trip through Amigos for Christ. After a long day of travel and almost losing some luggage along the way, I finally made it to Chinandega, Nicaragua. The next five days were spent in the hot, dusty, Nicaraguan sun, digging irrigation ditches, visiting an orphanage, painting houses, playing with kids, and desperately trying to remember my ten years of Spanish vocabulary. We were joined by another group from Santa Clara University in California: the drama kids. It was quite interesting to see the juxtaposition of theatre people and engineers. The Santa Clara crew spent the week working with one village to prepare a play that we got to see on Friday. Each day, we dragged our pick axes, shovels, shoes full of sandcastles, and dirt-caked selves home to a floor covered with back drops and pieces of scenery. After three days of this, someone finally exclaimed, “Man, I wish I could act!” However, it was amazing to see what they had accomplished at the end of the week, as we joined the people of Villa Catalina to watch Where the Wild Things Are entirely in Spanish.
I’ve been on mission trips before, but they always seem to have the same impact on me, no matter how many times I go. There’s something about waking up, working your butt off, and coming back filthy and tired every day that never gets old when you know that you are creating a better life for someone. Sometimes I need to be reminded of why I’m struggling through Tech and putting up with the endless schoolwork. Hopefully, one day, I can be part of a more permanent solution for people like those in Nicaragua. It was also inspiring to see the people in the villages that we visited working just as hard, probably harder, than us. Men, women, and children would show up bright and early, ready to work, every day. It was evident that they truly wanted this water, and it was encouraging to see that they understood that they had to work for it as well. With an attitude like that, there is no telling what can be accomplished in even a few generations.
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